Music. For people with ears.

‘Last Day…’ holds a special place in my heart for a variety of reasons. It’s the oldest song on the album and harks back from the Dirty Touch/Red Light days. I always liked playing this as it was a bit different from the other stuff we did back then. And I harbour a secret love for country music. This is probably the only song that TBOTB ever had that my Dad would approve of – mainly because of my Hank Marvin rip-off guitar solo at the end and the fact that you can tap your foot to it (very important for Mr G Whitear…the rest he’d class as ‘a bit of a dirge’). Hank Marvin was my first ever proper gig at Portsmouth Guildhall when I was about 12 or 13. I wanted to go and see Bush play on the same night at The Wedgewood Rooms. Thank God I was made to go see Hank.

We often used to open or close sets with an unplugged version of this in the audience. Again, I think I nicked the idea (perhaps off Guillemots?) but people always seemed to respond well and, during our tour with The Dawn Chorus, more and more of those guys would join in every night until there was all of us belting it out. Sometimes utilising a megaphone. Happy happy times.

It hasn’t been aired for a while as I vowed never to play it again a couple of years ago. The DC guys teamed up with TBOTB for a ‘super-group’ playing the finest selection of indie-disco covers at my wedding (and if you’d’ve seen Dave’s little face playing the ‘Buddy Holly’ Weezer solo you’d have seen just how super…) – It was absolutely perfect. I didn’t really want to be involved band-wise but this song was just made for the occasion so it went in the set and I got up to sing/slur it. I’d had a couple of whiskies by that point so was pretty…err….’emotional’. Myself and my wife were married on the 21/12/2012 which, in the Mayan calendar was supposed to be the end of the world (hence ‘Last Day on Earth’…). It’s a very personal song and one that you only need listen to the lyrics to get the gist. Carpe Diem and all that. No hidden meanings or mysterious ambiguity in this one. Will it come back for the last gig??? Who knows…

Other stuff worth mentioning for this tune is that it features the mighty talents of Clym Arnold (formerly of The Deads) on the lap steel and also that we recorded a broken old Hammond organ and a double bass for it which I heartily enjoyed. I think we’d done loads to it before I declared that it was a smidgeon too slow as well so we also had to speed the whole thing up a touch before I could do the vocals. What a numpty.

Love this song. It was a real contender for our first dance at our wedding in May, but as we went for Alaska in the ceremony, we decided to spread the love and went for Eels. This would have been great though. 🙂